Goonhub
08-18-2024, 06:51 AM
This topic (mutantrace hair) is one that I've spent a lot of time thinking about, and I feel strongly about. Whether or not this PR gets merged, I'm thankful that it was made because it's got more people talking about and thinking about this again. I was responsible for mutantrace hair being added to a downstream, and witnessed firsthand the effects it had on gameplay. This solidified my belief that the lack of mutantrace hair is a dated construct that is doing more harm to the game than good at this point.
IRT "mutantrace rework"/future customization options:
I strongly believe two things in regards to this. Firstly, the concept is nebulous and lacks any concrete evidence that it will be happening any time this year, next year, or in the next decade. That's completely fine; Goon dev work is volunteer work, and no one is obligated to pick up and finish a project. However, it means that the game is going to continue to be played day in and day out in its current state, and I believe that making positive changes like this that are already coded and PRed should be considered strongly on the merit of them being something tangible. Secondly, I believe that a mutantrace rework that adds in extra fields of customization does not necessarily need to be mutually exclusive with the addition of mutantrace hair. Extra appendages like horns, fins, ears, etc can be worn alongside hair; cow horns already layer overtop of wigs, which creates a visual that's unique to them and (IMO) looks funky + cool. Customization of the body itself, like markings, also isn't really affected by the concept of hair on the head. Plenty of people already play mutantrace characters without wigs, and many more will likely join their ranks to reap the rewards of cool + unique visual markings. If the perceived problem is that the three colour fields will be taken up by hair, that's already how it is with 2 of the races (lizards + cows) whose fields affect both their wig hair and their visual appearance, which IMO makes their designs a lot cooler and more concise rather than being a problem.
IRT mutantrace visual identity vs humans:
Haven't seen this one brought up much on here yet, but its come up every other time so I thought I'd throw my thoughts in here anyways. Our mutantraces are specifically designed to have several different visual and audio cues that differentiate them from each other and from humans, not just a bald head. Even with mutantrace characters that take the wig trait currently and purposefully choose the best options to purposefully obsfucate as much of their head and face as possible, it's still really difficult to mistake mutantraces for humans/for each other. With the exception of skeleton. It's really easy to disguise being a skeleton until you say something (I find that funny though).
If your opinion is just that mutant humans shouldn't have hair, and that the correct answer will never be to allow players to play a lizard that has hair, that's fair enough. There's nothing I can do to change your mind. I've spoken personally to a lot of players who chose to move away from Goonstation to other SS13 branches because their implementation of mutant races was more of a customization choice and lot less give-and-take. Different people have different feelings on it.
Regardless, here's the meat of why I loved it when it was implemented elsewhere, and I got to watch firsthand how it felt before-vs-after:
Hats are a very important part of departmental identity. Sprites on the main body are a great due to having more real estate, but they're more frequently muddied by the amount of shared real estate going on (jumpsuit + suit + backpack + belt + in-hand) vs the hat which sits atop the sprite with not much else going on up there. There was a palpable difference in at-a-glance recognizeability on the codebase I witnessed this on, and they didn't even have the current level of out of uniform dressup game shenanigans that Goonstation does. HoS berets, secoff helmets, chief engineer/engineer hard hats, captain, chef, mail courier, and detective all have distinctive hats off the top of my head, and even if a handful of them will still eschew the hat for some other kind of drip from the clothing booth, having even one more secoff with a helmet would do wonders for visual readability.
As a bonus, it would be a positive for gang rounds in the same way IMO. From my experiences, many people who take the wig trait currently will not wear their gang hat unless they're actually in a fight, since it's one or the other and the bonuses don't really come into play until you're doing something that actually needs them.
IRT "mutantrace rework"/future customization options:
I strongly believe two things in regards to this. Firstly, the concept is nebulous and lacks any concrete evidence that it will be happening any time this year, next year, or in the next decade. That's completely fine; Goon dev work is volunteer work, and no one is obligated to pick up and finish a project. However, it means that the game is going to continue to be played day in and day out in its current state, and I believe that making positive changes like this that are already coded and PRed should be considered strongly on the merit of them being something tangible. Secondly, I believe that a mutantrace rework that adds in extra fields of customization does not necessarily need to be mutually exclusive with the addition of mutantrace hair. Extra appendages like horns, fins, ears, etc can be worn alongside hair; cow horns already layer overtop of wigs, which creates a visual that's unique to them and (IMO) looks funky + cool. Customization of the body itself, like markings, also isn't really affected by the concept of hair on the head. Plenty of people already play mutantrace characters without wigs, and many more will likely join their ranks to reap the rewards of cool + unique visual markings. If the perceived problem is that the three colour fields will be taken up by hair, that's already how it is with 2 of the races (lizards + cows) whose fields affect both their wig hair and their visual appearance, which IMO makes their designs a lot cooler and more concise rather than being a problem.
IRT mutantrace visual identity vs humans:
Haven't seen this one brought up much on here yet, but its come up every other time so I thought I'd throw my thoughts in here anyways. Our mutantraces are specifically designed to have several different visual and audio cues that differentiate them from each other and from humans, not just a bald head. Even with mutantrace characters that take the wig trait currently and purposefully choose the best options to purposefully obsfucate as much of their head and face as possible, it's still really difficult to mistake mutantraces for humans/for each other. With the exception of skeleton. It's really easy to disguise being a skeleton until you say something (I find that funny though).
If your opinion is just that mutant humans shouldn't have hair, and that the correct answer will never be to allow players to play a lizard that has hair, that's fair enough. There's nothing I can do to change your mind. I've spoken personally to a lot of players who chose to move away from Goonstation to other SS13 branches because their implementation of mutant races was more of a customization choice and lot less give-and-take. Different people have different feelings on it.
Regardless, here's the meat of why I loved it when it was implemented elsewhere, and I got to watch firsthand how it felt before-vs-after:
Hats are a very important part of departmental identity. Sprites on the main body are a great due to having more real estate, but they're more frequently muddied by the amount of shared real estate going on (jumpsuit + suit + backpack + belt + in-hand) vs the hat which sits atop the sprite with not much else going on up there. There was a palpable difference in at-a-glance recognizeability on the codebase I witnessed this on, and they didn't even have the current level of out of uniform dressup game shenanigans that Goonstation does. HoS berets, secoff helmets, chief engineer/engineer hard hats, captain, chef, mail courier, and detective all have distinctive hats off the top of my head, and even if a handful of them will still eschew the hat for some other kind of drip from the clothing booth, having even one more secoff with a helmet would do wonders for visual readability.
As a bonus, it would be a positive for gang rounds in the same way IMO. From my experiences, many people who take the wig trait currently will not wear their gang hat unless they're actually in a fight, since it's one or the other and the bonuses don't really come into play until you're doing something that actually needs them.